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Canadian companies take advantage o
- Subject: Canadian companies take advantage o
- From: darnott@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 08:34:00
Canadian companies take advantage of lax
Canadian controls, says
watchdog
OTTAWA (CP) September 18, 2000 -- Canadian
companies are taking
advantage of lax federal controls to exploit
workers and the environment
in Myanmar, helping prop up a corrupt military
regime in the process,
says a mining watchdog.
The group Mining Watch Canada says Ivanhoe
Mines Ltd.,
incorporated in the Yukon and registered on
the Toronto Stock
Exchange, is raping the environment and using
forced labour to build
roads in the country once known as Burma.
Canada imposed limited sanctions on the
country in 1997, but not on
investment. Activists urged Canada on Monday
-- the 12th anniversary of
Myanmar's military regime -- to sanction
investors.
Myanmar's are the "worst set of mining
regulations that I have ever seen from
a social and environmental point of view,"
said Roger Moody, an anti-mining
campaigner.
"There is no question that human-rights
abuses are now being attached
to the exploitation of mining in Burma," said
Moody, who released a 78-page
report on mining in the Southeast Asia
country, including a list of more than a
dozen Canadian companies that have conducted
operations there.
"In particular, concern is being raised about
the expansion of the Ivanhoe
(copper) mines."
Myanmar's regime, which owns 50 per cent of
Ivanhoe's operations there, has
identified mining as critical to providing
foreign exchange and income, said
Moody.
Ivanhoe president Dan Koonz called the Mining
Watch report a "deliberate
misrepresentation of the facts" by an
anti-mining zealot.
"He's far from an independent," Koonz said
from Boise, Idaho. "He basically
has some agenda that's anti-mining, anti-big
company."
Koonz denied the most charges but
acknowledged that Ivanhoe's Myanmar
operations are a joint venture with the
country's mines ministry.
The National League for Democracy won
Myanmar's last elections in 1990 by
a landslide but has never been allowed to
govern. A repressive military junta
has remained in power since 1988.
"There are 146 different tribes and ethnic
groups that have been at civil war for
decades and decades," Koonz said. "It's
complicated.
"The military government, unfortunately, is
probably the only form of
government that can deal with such a complex
problem."
Moody said people have been forced to work
and were driven from their land to
make way for expansion of Ivanhoe's Monywa mine.
Koonz, who says he's been to Myanmar hundreds
of times, denied it.
The mine, he said, was functioning for a
decade before Ivanhoe took over.
"We've paid very good wages. There was never
any forced labour."
Foreign Affairs spokesman Francois Lasalle
said Ottawa has no confirmation
of forced labour in Myanmar.
Moody said local water supplies have been
contaminated and health problems
are evident.
Koonz said Ivanhoe is using technology that's
environmentally superior to that
used in 70 per cent of world copper production.
Ivanhoe, owned by Canadian Robert Friedland,
was incorporated in the Yukon,
where laws do not require directors to be
resident in Canada and Ivanhoe can
profit from lax foreign-income controls.
Several Ivanhoe board members are Canadian
residents, said Koonz.
"I think the suggestion is that since we
incorporated in a place where we get
some advantages, we're bad boys," he said.
"But if you look at a roster of
who's incorporated in the Yukon, we will not
be alone.
"There are hundreds of companies there."
Ottawa has repeatedly discouraged companies
from investing in Myanmar,
but the law makes it difficult to cut off all
Canadian investments there, said
Lasalle.
"It requires 'a grave breach of international
peace and security that results or
is likely to result in a serious international
crisis". said Lasalle.
"Although the situation there is deplorable
and tragic, it doesn't meet that
requirement."